The Start of His Brilliant Career
by Tazlet
Summary: Returning to England in 1660, after his encounter with Kristin Giles, Duncan is given an opportunity to learn enhanced survival skills.


_25 December 2017_

"Stop it." Methos delivered a poke to his lover's shoulder.

MacLeod's snoring shifted to a softer rumble, but he vouchsafed no other response.

"You're wallowing like a pig in the afterglow."

"As'slander…" MacLeod protested. "Not wall'ing."

"Take up your duties as mine host. Feed me. I'm hungry. I want popcorn." Methos poked the shoulder again. "Beer."

MacLeod rolled over and let the warmth of his body, the weight of it, and its sheer bone-lessness in the aftermath of strenuous sex, insinuate that it would not be moving toward the kitchen. "Sen' out later," he murmured. But not for an hour, at least.

Methos considered prodding him again but gave it up a as bad job. He didn't want to put his feet on the cold floor, either.

"Thai, or nothing," he said. "Hand me the remote."

Seemingly of its own volition, MacLeod's hand excavated the remote from the blanket and passed it over. Then, exhausted from so much effort, it collapsed on Methos' breast and spent the last of its strength at the tip of a finger, titillating a nipple.

"Suck that, if you're still hungry."

"Not, considering where it's been…"

Methos enfolded the hand in one of his, and began flipping channels.

When the television landed on one of the cheesier substations, MacLeod was confident that Methos had found adequate distraction. He released a sigh and settled down to finish cataloging the sensations of his lover's body: salt under the arms, brine between the legs, pine and faint musk at the base of his throat… It was better than counting sheep, and he was sliding back down into the abyss when he heard a gravelly, not to mention nasal and highly irritating voice voice say, _"Here we go night fright freaks! It's a Graham Cracker production: 2014's 'Devil with an Angel Face', produced and directed by the Impresario of Presentment, the Director of Dread himself! Walter Gray-yam!"_

The words pierced his ear, bored into his brain and, like the skeletal fingers of a phantom harpist, plucked a chord of memory. As the theme music, a spinet-heavy orchestration of Purcell's 'Fairy Queen' music for Thomas Betterton's version of Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer's Night's Dream' swelled, the hair on the back of MacLeod's neck stood slowly on end. His eyes opened. He levered himself up on an elbow just in time to see the blood drenched letters fade to reveal…

 _Scene I._

 _Woods, a dirt road, and a careening coach._

 _The driver of the coach, unaware of the ambush ahead, is urging his galloping team to go faster. He lashes them on in a vain attempt to escape the pursuing horseman…_

 __ _26 April 1660_

"Do it," Kristin challenged him. "Do it! I know you think I'm some kind of monster."

MacLeod drew his arm drawn back for the killing stroke, and then froze.

"Do it! Damn you!"

Still he hesitated, and she threw herself back on the satin cover, thrashing in a parody of lust. She ripped at her bodice, exposing her breasts, and the foaming lace of her petticoats gave glimpses of her pink thighs. One of her shoes hit the floor as she kicked out, and he saw one of her red garters undone, her silk stocking slipping down her leg. She groaned, and he felt he could feel the ragged susurration of her breath on his skin.

"Do it!"

Her voice had grown raw. Her perfume—bergamot, amber, and the insinuating scent of her own musk—was in his head, and his prick throbbed like an animal, coursing on the scent.

"I know you want to."

All his senses spoke of the warm, wet heaven he had found between her legs. His arm trembled, as hers thrashed above her head, mirroring the sinuous curve of her body. One of her hands clutched at the peach satin cover, and the other had buried itself in a mound of purple pillows. Her body was so vulnerable when she needed him that the urge to throw down his weapon and fling himself upon her, like the barbarian she said he was, was overwhelming.

He ran for his life.

In the hall, a maid bearing a silver tray, squeaked as he shoved her aside. A flagon and two delicate stemmed wine glasses, went flying. Burgundy stained the Gobelin tapestry red.

"No!" Kristin howled. "Stop him! Someone, stop him!"

He reached the staircase as Tranquille, her butler, alert for the vagaries of his mistress's temper, erupted from a closet. He attempted to block MacLeod's way. Then seeing the point of the rapier coming, Tranquille gave a thin scream, sucked in his belly, and evaded the point that would have skewered him.

MacLeod thrust again, and Tranquille skipped the other way, but this was no contest. Given a fair target, MacLeod would have killed him, but Tranquille was a thin, undersized man, and, moreover, one who had been kind to him. Further, he was also unarmed, and his eyes were full of the knowledge that this moment would end in his death, or in a beating that could leave him crippled for life.

MacLeod cast a glance over Tranquille's shoulder, as if someone at the other end of the passageway were coming. Desperate for rescue, Tranquille turned his head, and MacLeod shaved his side, delivering a bloody wound, but one that was not necessarily fatal. Tranquille promptly fainted.

With the way clear, MacLeod plunged down the stairs. Halfway down, impelled by the increasing commotion created by the maid's screams and Kristin's shrieks, he leapt over the balustrade, but landed off balance, and broke his ankle.

He also fell on his ass, and got up cursing the two footmen who had arrived but, having no orders to detain their mistress's lover, attempted to help him, thus interfering with his escape more than they would have if they'd actually tried to stop him. After knocking them down, he loped back to the kitchens, where his bloody sword, and black expression sent the cooks and their helpers running for their lives.

He ran through the kitchen gardens, between the succession houses, and in front of the stables he had the good fortune to find his horse saddled, alongside Kristin's mare. The stablemen were always prepared should she elect to take a morning's exercise.

MacLeod grabbed the reins from the startled groom, flung himself onto the back of the big bay and jabbed his spurs into its flanks. Intending to put as much distance between himself and Kristin Giles as possible, and he drove the horse shamefully, galloping through the park, and slowing only when trees gave way to farmland and the path descended into a sunken lane.

Three miles on the lane climbed to emerge at the crossroads known as Saint Onge. There he stopped to rest the horse, and to decide what to do next.

There was a foul taste in his mouth. He was sickened with the knowledge that a wiser man would have taken her head and spat his disgust on the ground. There was no going back to the chateau, and he had no idea what to do next. The exhausted horse could feel his tension and came close to unseating him. As he calmed it, his rage abated.

Saint Onge wasn't a village. It was a way-stop at the boundary where Kristin's estate abutted those of her two nearest neighbors. One of those lords had set a mill there, and a tavern had sprung up to serve farmers as they waited for their wheat to be ground. It would as willingly serve any passerby who cared to risk getting fleas.

Two peasants playing checkers at a table front of that tavern sat gawping at him. He didn't blame them; they were bound to stare. He had fled the Chateau in a short coat and petticoat breeches made of creamy silk, trimmed with yards and yards of golden ribbon. His arrival—windblown, and the dirt on his face streaked from tears—added novelty to their day.

Beyond the tavern, there was a signpost where the roads crossed. One of its jagged arms pointed south to Gournay, and the road to Paris, another pointed west to Honfleur, and another to Dieppe.

Which way to go?

He was armed, but dressed as he was and possessing neither hat nor cloak, he was marked if Kristin took it into her head to send men after him. At least the last bit of the reward he had received from the prince of Verona for 'killing' Fitzcairn was still secure in a leather pouch inside of what he was still prone to think of as his 'trews'.

Despite the times she had excoriated him for carrying money on his person—a _gentleman has servants for that_ —as much as she had plagued him, he had never given in and left it by. He wasn't skint, but at the value of ten shillings it wouldn't take him as far as he needed to go.

The tavern keeper appeared in the doorway, and MacLeod requested a glass of _eau de vie_ , letting the man see a glint of silver between his fingers.

While he waited, he observed the arms of the windmill turning around, the gears squealing. There was a farm cart waiting to be loaded. A heavy yellow horse cropped grass on the verge. There was also a fine gray mule with a riding cushion on its back, that could not have belonged to either of the checker players.

The tapster returned and handed up a horn beaker.

"Who's drinking inside?" said MacLeod.

"'Pere Baptiste from Gournay, your honor."

MacLeod lifted an eyebrow. "He doesn't care to drink in the same house as his parishioners?" Gournay lay a full mile down the valley. It was a market town, and boasted an inn.

"They don't care to drink with him. They've complained of his habits to the bishop." The taverner spat on the ground. "Begging your honor's pardon."

"In that case, let him have another." MacLeod slipped a coin into his empty beaker and handed it to the tapster. "Or two."

"Of course, your honor." The coin was worth ten times the price of the drink.

Three days later, the authorities in Dieppe received a report that a dour man in a black cassock and cape of a country priest had been seen in a pawn shop in Dieppe.

He had been observed exchanging a superb German rapier for a plain, although, serviceable broadsword.

With its jeweled hilt, the rapier was obviously an aristocrat's weapon.

From a rag merchant in the same street, the man had purchased a close-kneed suit of somber cloth, buff stockings, a pair of high riding boots, and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with a pheasant's feather to shade his face.

The man was no priest, or aristocrat, or even a gentleman.

He hadn't even been French.

Undoubtedly an English spy.

The master of the harbor who received the report briefly considered passing it along it to his counterparts along the coast but, in the end, used it to light a fire.

As for MacLeod, he had considered it a pity about the rapier; it had been a gift from Kristin, and the steal was superb. The pawnbroker, though, had been a suspicious bastard, barely forking over a tenth of its value, and then had haggled over the broadsword.

Aware that he was being watched, he had made his way from the rag merchant's shop to the docks where, after an interview with the harbor officer and dispensing rather more than the customary gratuity, he had been permitted to purchase the license that permitted him to pass over the sea.

From there, he had found the Dover packet preparing to cast off. Passage had cost him the value of an English crown, and then there had been his part of the hire of the boat that pulled the packet into the Channel.

Once at sea, the crossing had been rendered hellish by the choppy waves and rough winds. Rather than try to sleep in the cabin enveloped in the fug of his fellow travelers, all of them seasick to a man, he had spent most of the fourteen-hour crossing on deck in the cold, drowsing occasionally. They came in sight of the Dover light at two in the morning, and stood off shore until the sun came up, and a skiff arrived to carry the passengers ashore.

His seat in the skiff cost him six pence and, as the little boat it made its way into the harbor through the seagoing traffic, he noted Dover castle high on the cliff above the town with its guns pointed toward France. There were a great number of ships of the line at anchor in the harbor as well, so many that their masts were like a forest before the town.

The skiff had to pass between two first rates to reach the wharf, and MacLeod had looked up at their great wooden sides looming above and wondered at their rows of freshly painted gun ports and their rails draped with bunting, drooping sadly in the rain. He'd remembered hearing of the Dutch war ending, but that had been shortly before he met Kristin.

He had little time to wonder about it. As he stepped onto the dock he was taken up, along with the other passengers, by a squad of soldiers and escorted to the office of the lieutenant governor of the castle. There, a sour-faced man in rusty black subjected him to an interview that made the one he'd endured in Dieppe seem a walk on the Strand.

For two hours, he was closely questioned as to his reason for traveling at the season, and catechized as to any papist sympathies he might harbor. He was made to provide the names of his friends, and his destination; Connor's London address, was copied. Last, he was charged a landing fee that relieved him of all his remaining funds, except for the ten shillings in the pouch in his breeches.

The fee was outrageous, and he said so; whereupon, he was informed he was free to lodge a complaint with the governor but in that event, he would also spend as long as it took to send to his friends in a cell beneath Dover castle.

Released and relieved, he thought to find a bed and breakfast, but Dover's inns were bursting at the seams. The taprooms were crowded, and abuzz with rumors. It was impossible not to eavesdrop and that was how he learned that the Commonwealth had been restored, and that the members of parliament had again taken their seats. As to which faction would win out, and who would be named Lord Protector, he had no interest.

He wanted breakfast, but the meagre meal he managed to secure at the Cock and Bull was vile. It was past noon before he found a stable where he could hire a horse, and that was at thrice the posted rate. In the end, there was nothing to do but set out for London, and hope he could find food and lodging on the road.

His grief for Louise was still a gnawing pain but, despite that and everything else he had endured in the last week, from the moment he'd seen the sun sweep the white cliffs with gold, he had felt lighter in spirit. France and Kristin were behind him; his only problem was how to make the six shillings in his pouch last the two and a half days it would take to get from Dover to London.

He hadn't enjoyed robbing the priest, and life as a Gentleman of the Road held little appeal. In London, he should have access to the gold he had left with one of the keepers of running cash in Gresham Street, but that had been over twenty years ago, and it might take time to establish an identity. If Connor was at home, he could secure a loan. If both prospects failed, he would need to find employment quickly.

The Dover Road had been in use since before the Romans came—or so Connor had told him—but for so early in the spring there was a remarkable amount of traffic on it. More than once he had to make way for government coaches, with outriders and wagons, heading south, that spattered him with mud as they pelted by.

Still, the sun was bright, the leaves on the trees had been washed clean by the rain, and small birds, when not interrupted by traffic, were courting melodiously. The horse, a poor bag of bones, was barely up to his weight, but he let it amble as it would.

In the late afternoon, south of Canterbury, he came to fork in the road. The prospect dinner had been on his mind for the last two hours but, after due reflection, he chose the left-hand way. Winding between the river and a bank of limestone ledges, it was not as straight as the main road but it was less traveled and any inn he came to would be less dear than a crammed posting inn.

As it happened, within a mile he came to bow in the river and a snug timber framed house with a thatched roof that bore the sign of a public inn. The lime-washed building stood on the foundation of an older establishment that looked to have been rooted in the rock. Beyond it was a village and so, one way or another, he should be able to find a bed for the night.

There was a ladder against the front of the inn. At the top of it, a red-haired man was balanced rather precariously. He was engaged in repainting the sign. Below him on the third rung, facing out, sat a bearded, brown-haired man, who might have been intending to brace the ladder against the wall but was displaying more interest in the book on his knee.

Conscious, suddenly, of another immortal's presence, MacLeod stopped the horse. Both men—the painter, and the reader—looked up at the same moment.

The reader, after studying him with great interest, snapped his book shut and with a wide grin, called, "Hullo, friend! Welcome to Hernswell, and The Bilious Turnip. You may as well stop; it's holy ground."

"The Green Man!" the man on the ladder said. "Welcome to The Green Man!"

"We haven't made up our minds." The man on the ground made a shoo-fly motion. "I see a stronger resemblance to a turnip."

"I'm doing the best I can." The man on the ladder raised a brush charged with yellow paint and threatened to rain it down on his tormentor. To MacLeod, he said, "Are you a limner, by chance?"

"By no chance," MacLeod said.

"That's a pity." The painter returned his work but in attempting to gain perspective he leaned too far, and the ladder came away from the wall.

The man at the bottom put his weight on it.

"'S'blood! Will you give it up, and let Old Hundred do it, so I won't be explaining to Bess when you both break your necks, and only one of you gets up." He looked again to MacLeod. "Where are you coming from, friend?"

"Dover," said MacLeod.

"Excellent. If you've some news to share, mayhap Sean will stop trying to kill himself."

"I don't have news, but I would take dinner and a bed."

"It looks like that beast of yours could use the same."

"I expect he could."

MacLeod nudged the horse to a wooden trough beside the ladder, dismounted and tied the reins to an iron ring. Overhead, the sign squeaked and wagged back and forth as the painter dabbed a few more strokes.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to take it down?" he said.

"Yes, but that would have made sense. Don't break your neck, Sean."

After admonishing the painter, the bearded man abandoned the ladder entirely to introduce himself to MacLeod.

"Walter Graham, theatrical impresario extraordinaire." He dragged out the last word, and completed his bow with a flourish.

"Duncan MacLeod, of the Clan MacLeod," MacLeod said, as they clasped forearms. "What's a theatric impresser? I've never heard of it before."

"In my case," said Graham, obviously disappointed with MacLeod's ignorance, "it's author, poet, playwright, general manager, and occasional player, for the traveling company of Lord Hasting's players."

"I thought the playhouses were closed in '42."

"Yes, but the ordinance to which you refer did not cancel patents, and makes no mention of private homes, inns, or fields open to the sky. In short, they must catch and indict us first. Are you, by chance, a player?"

"I'm not."

"Have you ever thought of becoming one? You have a look for it."

"Never in this world."

"Let me know if you change your mind." Graham tended to accompany his words with exaggerated expression, often followed by a grin as infectious as the plague. With his bright blue eyes, the whole affect was disarming.

During their exchange, the painter had come down from the ladder, and backed away for a better view of his work.

"What do you think?" he said

"I already told you," said Graham. "You're no Holbein."

"And you're not the pope, and I wasn't asking you." The painter appealed to MacLeod, "Give me your honest opinion, sir. It was called The King's Head."

MacLeod went around the horse's rump. He took a place next to red haired man, and contemplated the painted image.

"I can see you've refreshed it," he temporized.

"God save me from diplomats. I know it stinks. I meant to have it done last autumn, but there's been no decent limner by."

"Whose fee you would pay," said Graham.

"Quiet, gobemouche!" The artist now turned to MacLeod. "Ignore that man, whatever he tells you. I'm Sean Burns, proprietor of The Greenman."

"Duncan MacLeod, of the Clan MacLeod."

They hand shook and discovered that the blue and green paint on Burns' hand was still very wet. Burns handed him a rag.

"I knew a Connor of that ilk. He was a man of our sort, so he may yet live."

"My kinsman," said MacLeod. "I'm hoping to find him in London."

"Consider resting here a day, or two," Burns said, giving MacLeod's rented steed a calculating eye. "That creature looks ready to drop between your legs."

"I take your point."

"Good man," said Burns, as MacLeod mentally counted the coins in his purse, again. "Wat," Burns turned to Graham, "I entrust our new acquaintance to you. See him refreshed, and don't rob me blind."

"As if I would." Graham mimed a man being stabbed in the side. "You wound me much, my friend."

"I would if I thought it would make you go away an hour sooner." Burns picked up his pots of paint and walked off. "I'll send the ostler for the nag."

"It looks like you're staying a while. Come have a drink."

"Aye," said MacLeod. He looked again at the sign, "I've no eye for pictures, but—"

"It looks like a rutabaga with eyes," said Graham.

MacLeod could not disagree. "The King's Head is a good name. Why change it?"

"Because Master Sean would like to keep his and, since he gives me a refuge in the off season, I support him in all—well, in most things."

"But, if this is holy ground, why does it matter what name is on the sign?"

Graham opened his eyes wide at MacLeod's perplexity.

"Child, have you been living on the moon these six months?"

"No, I've been in France."

"Same difference." Graham took him by the elbow. "Come; we'll talk. The taps are open, and the drinks are on the house. Are you certain that you're not a player?"

"Certain, as I'm a soldier. Why does everyone want me to have a different profession?"

"You never know; we can't predict the future," said Graham, as he guided MacLeod within. "It's well to have more than one string for your bow."

It was a well-kept house. The taproom was dark and cool. The stone floors were swept, the forms were stacked against the wall, and the trestle-boards scrubbed clean, yet, except for one ancient soul snoring in the inglenook, the place was empty. This state was no mystery, it was spring, and most people were working in the fields, and the double row of oaken barrels behind the counter-board indicated that state of calm was unlikely to continue but, for now, the place was as neat and tidy inside as it was out.

MacLeod spared a passing thought that the walls could have used a good lime-wash but that was not what commanded the greater part his attention. The rich smell of roasting meat urgently reminded his stomach that he hadn't eaten a scrap since that vile breakfast in Dover.

To his embarrassment, Graham heard the rumble.

"Bess!" he called, slipping under the counter-board. "Show yourself wench! There are customers out here! Hungry men who need to be fed!"

The buxom brown wench that emerged from the passage to the kitchen had a long wooden spoon in her hand, and an irate expression on her face. It was a face so clearly inclined to smiling that a scowl did not rest on it comfortably, but she wasn't letting that stop her.

"There you are, at last, my lovely." Graham smiled.

If his smile was an attempt to ingratiate himself with her, it failed. She raised her spoon, as if to clout him, and said, "Since when have freeloading tooth-holes become customers?"

"Bess, my sweet, be a dear and bring out the heel of that glorious rabbit pie from this morning. Master Sean has asked me to look after this gentleman."

He set a full pitcher on the counter-board, and indicated MacLeod, who was standing by with his hat in his hand.

"Another damned gallowglass; I'll wager," Bess said, looking MacLeod up and down.

"I've been traveling for days. I'd be grateful for even a scrap of bread and good English cheese." MacLeod tried the charm of his smile, but he felt it twist with a sudden urge to cry.

Bess didn't appear to notice anything amiss.

"At least you have manners," she said, giving a sniff, before turning and marching back to the kitchen.

"What's wrong, friend?" Graham said. "You look as if you had hold of the wrong end of an eel."

"I don't think she likes me," MacLeod said.

" _'She's a beagle, true-bred, and one that adores me,'_ " Graham said.

"Oh, I can see she does," said MacLeod.

"I don't know why she doesn't." Graham made a moue and shrugged. "Women are peculiar cattle."

"Aye," said MacLeod, still feeling the pang that had corrupted his smile. "That about the beagle sounded like Shakespeare," he said, as a distraction.

The look on Graham's face changed from that of a poacher caught in the act, but then to sheer joy. "You know the sweet swan of Avon?"

"I read three of his plays," MacLeod said. Almost the only volumes in English in Kristin's bookroom had been plays and poetry.

"I am impressed. You're a man of parts." Graham set three pewter tankards on the board, and filled them from the pitcher. "Get outside of this."

MacLeod dropped his hat on the nearest board, and came willingly, drawn by the amber stream and the smell of hops. He seized a tankard, saluted Graham, and took such a long pull, that he couldn't help sighing as he set it down.

"Now, I know this truly is holy ground," he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

"Good, isn't it? Our Sean was a monk on the Isle of Iona," Graham said, refilling MacLeod's tankard. "That was before the flood. The man is sober to a fault and yet there's nothing he doesn't know about brewing and distillery." He picked up a tankard. "Give him respect!" and then he confided, "When he really likes you; he'll break out the _uisce beatha_."

As if conjured by the speaking of his name, Burns appeared, to claim the third tankard.

"I told Joe to give that nag of yours some oats," he said. "Are you trying to starve the poor beast to death?"

"There was no other horse to be found in Dover this morning," MacLeod defended himself. "S'truth, the place was a madhouse."

"Let him rest a day or two. He may carry you."

"I've little money," MacLeod confessed.

"Then you can sleep in the barn, and we'll let him have your bed."

Graham winked as Burns moved aside to make room for Bess, who was carrying in a tray laden with the remains of a substantial pie. There was also on it a cold stuffed ham, a loaf of crusty bread, a pot of butter, a crock of honey, and a block of creamy golden cheese, all of which she lay out on the board beside MacLeod.

He felt the warmth of her breasts as she brushed by close on her way back to the kitchen. The touch did not go un-noticed.

"I think you're losing your interest there," Burns said, to Graham. "If you ever had any."

Graham reached for the bread and the cheese. "She'll come, if I whistle."

MacLeod paused in helping himself to a large wedge of pie, to avow, "I'll not interfere with another man's woman."

"But what if she whistles?" Graham looked at him slyly. "Or are you not one for the fair sex?"

"No," MacLeod said. Then he felt himself blushing fiercely. "I mean, yes! I like women fine." He took a bite of pie. It was the most delicious thing he had tasted in days. "That's good…" It was so good, he couldn't leave it to catch up with his thoughts, and to close the conversation, said, "They all say one thing, and do another."

"That they do," said Graham.

"Friends," said Burns, "you're both of you too young to be that cynical."

"I am three score and ten," said MacLeod.

"So ancient you could give five years to Old Hundred in the inglenook." Burns shook his head. "What cause do you have to be bitter?"

"I'd rather not talk about it." He didn't mean to sound sullen, or ungrateful, but the feelings that had been confounding him for months, were no one's business but his own.

"I am three hundred and fifty," said Graham. "Speaking for myself, I smell a woman at the bottom of it."

"Always the safe wager," said Burns, who turned then to MacLeod. "You're a guest in my house and we will not talk about what makes you uncomfortable. It's the rule of the house," Burns assured MacLeod. "But," he said, as MacLeod reached for the last of the pie, "if you are going to drink my beer and eat my meat, I will hear whatever news you've brought from the coast."

"I haven't any, as I told Master Graham. I've been in France and in Italy, for the better part, these past twenty-five years. I only came into Dover this morning and the place was a madhouse."

"How so?" said Burns.

"To get out of the the harbor master's office, I had to submit to the third degree. I swore I was no' a papist but he made me sign my name to a fooking piece of paper."

"Are you not a papist?"

"Of course, I am! But the bloody thief took near all my money!" After being nothing but beleaguered the last few days, he felt entitled to a certain amount of knocking, at least about the petty things.

"I'll pray to St. Amand that he smites him in his intellectuals for it," said Burns, touching his tankard to MacLeod's.

"I thank you, brother," said MacLeod, between mouthfuls of pie. As he finished the last bite, he become aware that both men were looking at him with amusement.

"I'm sorry, but I'm famishing. S'tuth, the bacon was rancid and there wasn't a bed to be had! The place was crawling with nobs, government men, and soldiers, and I don't know what, and—"

The other two laughed, as he was overwhelmed by jaw cracking yawn.

"I can think of a few tricks that are good for finding a bed in a strange place." Graham set his chin in his hand, and winked. "I'll teach them to you."

"Ignore him, or you'll finish in prison. What else did you see?" Burns said. "Tell me of the traffic in the channel, and what of the fleet in the harbor."

"I did not note the channel, we crossed at night, but there were ships at anchor, lots of them, all dressed out in bunting and flags."

"Their colors, man!" Suddenly Burns' eyes were gleaming with excitement. "What were their colors?"

"I don't know." As he finished the pie, MacLeod reached for the cheese, but Burns took out of from his hand.

"Was there a harp on them? Think man! It's important."

MacLeod remembered the sides of the ships towering over the little skiff, and the bunting, and the pennants streaming in the breeze.

"They were red, white and blue."

"The King's Colors. Eat man! You need your strength."

Burns handed MacLeod back the cheese, then turned and leaned back with his elbows on the counter. After contemplating the evening light outside the open door, he said, "Wat, there's a jug behind the barrel at the end. Bring it out."

Graham did not argue or comment, for once.

Burns then called, "Bess!" and, when she stuck her head out of the kitchen, said, "Call down Moll, and the men in from the stables. Then bring in the good glasses. You know the ones I mean."

She stared in surprise, and then vanished.

"Old Hundred!" Burns said. "Wake up!"

"Awa' with ye!" The ancient in the inglenook gave a twitch. "What's to do? Hopton's never coming 'ere! We chased him to Lostwithiel!"

"Get up, you old sod; I know you're feigning. The king is coming home!"

"Why didn't ye say so?!" The old man popped upright, scooched to the end of the settle, and reached for a pair of canes.

"What 'is't?'" said MacLeod.

"Bide." Burns pinned his arm to the counter as Bess returned. The eight glasses on her tray were made of heavy grey crystal. As she set them on the counter, Graham to filled with them with white spirits from the jug.

By the time the glasses were crowned and brimming, Old Hundred had stumped to the counter-board, and they had been joined by the chambermaid, along with the stableman, and two ostlers.

Burns looked at their faces, all bursting with curiosity.

"I see you wondering what's to do, and I'm going tell you. For some time, I've had word of a thing might be likely. Thanks to the information our new friend has brought," he acknowledged MacLeod, "I feel confident it's to happen soon. Take up a glass, each of you. I am going to propose a toast."

Burns took his own advice, and they followed his example.

"Raise you glasses to Charles, the King," Burns said.

Then, instead of saying 'over the water' he said, as if it were a prayer, "May his return bring peace to our troubled countries."

"Charles, the King!" they said.

The white liquor was fire. It sparked an outbreak of conjecture, and questions.

"Not now," Burns interrupted. "For now, I ask you to keep this to yourselves, and I want your word on it."

Solemnly, they all promised to keep the new to themselves, and then the excited babble started up again.

Burns turned first to MacLeod. "It was fortunate you didn't take the Canterbury road. Unlike Walter, you may stay until it's time to go."

"Thank you, I think," said MacLeod.

Graham grabbed him by the ears and bussed him full on the mouth. "You know what this means?"

"The king is coming back?" MacLeod said, wiping his mouth.

"No, it means—"

"Out of the way." Bess gave Graham a shove. "No one cares what you think, you wayward clod!"

She kissed MacLeod enthusiastically on both cheeks and Moll did the same, although she was shyer about it.

The stablemen merely doffed their hats and ducked their heads and drifted away to their stations, leaving MacLeod with Burns and Graham to absorb the news, and to try and understand what it meant.

Burns spoke of the evils of a government that was not sustained by the will of its people. But, he said, that with strong experienced ministers and parliament to advise the new king there would a great reconciliation an end confusion and chaos. People would be allowed to worship as they wished. Neighbors would stop tittle-tattling.

Graham said that they would find something new to scandalize about, but the playhouses would reopen, and that would give them a good start. He spoke of his company of players, and revealed they were to arrive any day.

"We'll see who shows up. Last year was a poor season but it's time to plan a new tour." He turned to MacLeod. "If you like, you can help me get the carts out the barn; clean the hay and rat droppings out…"

When MacLeod had taken Connor's advice that he leave Scotland, he had passed through England. The year had been '35 and Charles I had then been king. It was in Italy, he had been fighting for the Duke of Parma, when he heard that King Charles had been beheaded. Now Charles' son was returning to claim the throne as Charles II.

Listening to them it occurred to MacLeod that he hadn't been here, or taken a side in the wars that had set brother against brother, and torn the kingdoms apart. Yes, he could go home, but why? Now one was alive who would remember him, and he had no more plans than the day he'd left. How had that happened?

After all the time he had spent carousing with Hugh Fitzcairn, learning the arts of war, fighting for whichever duke or count was hiring…and then the year before last, when he had parted from Hugh, he had set out for home. Instead, he had met Kristin and become obsessed with her, and then Louise…

In the beginning, he had written to Connor and to Fritz, and to Rebecca Horne, to let them know he was alive in France, and had learned to write. But there had been no letters in reply. That was what Kristin had told him, and he had never thought to doubt her.

He remembered thinking how rarely she visited with her neighbors, except formally, and never received company. She had never taken him to Versailles. He knew she stayed aware of the doings of the French court, broadsides had come to the chateau, but they had never spoken of politics. It was as if the outside world hadn't been real.

He and Louise had spoken of going to Paris. She had had friends there, and a following that included Vauban, Rigaud, and the poet de la Fontaine—names he did not know—that had been Louise's dream.

Now, that whole year felt like a dream and, like a dream, it was fading quickly.

The thought was followed by the memory of finding Louise in the water, and he was deeply ashamed. When Burns offered to fill his glass with another around of spirits, he accepted, and then another.

Outside the taproom, too, others were imagining the king's return and what it might mean.

The stableman, despite his solemn promise, told the blacksmith. He only told the blacksmith, but the blacksmith wasn't bound by any promise and he told every farmer and housewife who passed by the smithy.

It didn't take long for the news to spread, they discovered, when the people of Herneswell, and the immediate countryside, left the spring planting to come streaming into The Greenman and demand if it was true.

They were bursting with rumors: King Charles was in France! King Charles had landed at Dover! King Charles had returned last week at the head of a Dutch army that was at the gates of London, even now!

Burns had to assure them, repeatedly, that King Charles was in Holland, waiting only for a favorable wind to bring him home.

It didn't matter, to Burns evident frustration, the farmers and their wives, children, and babies weren't about to leave. The public rooms filled to overflowing. They were there, they had a reason to celebrate, and there was ale behind the counter-board. In the end, he ordered the trestles, the forms, and two barrels carried outside and set up in the road.

As the sun set, the people of Herneswell partied as they hadn't in years. It was like an old-fashioned bride-ale. Soon there was venison roasting on a spit, although no one specified from where the deer had come. There were cakes and pies. Musical instruments long hidden away—a hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, and a drum—were brought out and the oldest songs were sung under the planting moon.

MacLeod drank, and ate and plied his feet in the dancing among the rest. He decided that this is what he had missed. This was real. Even if England wasn't home, it was good to be here. At one point, as the dancers whirled about, he saw Burns in conversation with Graham in the shadows under the trees. He thought to thank them but, when the circle came around again, they had vanished.

It was after just such a long and complicated reel, that he made his way behind the stables. That was where Bess found him knotting his points with clumsy fingers.

No words were exchanged. She undid all his painstaking work, and with his breeches tumbling down, he took her in his arms against the wall. He snuffed at her neck, loosened her laces, and ducked his head to suck on her nipples. He pulled her skirts up behind, and squeezed her broad buttocks in both hands, and teased her cuny with a finger.

Unlike Kristin, who smelled of oranges and ambergris, and stale rose powder, Bess smelled of wood smoke and apples. Her mouth tasted of ale. He would have consumed her, had her voice in his ear not been telling him precisely what she wanted him to do to her. She wasn't precious. She wasn't delicate. This was how it should be between a man and a woman.

Her hands were under his shirt, between his legs, stroking his prick, working it to a pitch. "Walter?" he said, managing to contain himself that long. "I won't betray another man."

"I'm not his woman," she said. "And he'd rather you any day, than me."

He picked her up, and her legs went around his hips. He thrust. She was wet and hot, and infolded him, pushing and rocking. calling him a stallion. He could feel her muscles around him, pressing the length of him, and driving him to a shattering dissolution. He tried to hold out. He tried to please her, but she was in control of it as it happened, and he wasn't certain, until he came back to himself, that she had achieved her climax as well. Then he felt the soft throbbing of her cuny along the length of him, growing softer and softer.

The buzzing his ears was dying as well, he heard horses and someone calling in the distance.

"I have to go," Bess said, pushed at him. He popped out, swelling anew, and tried to push back in. She found her footing They butted heads. He interfered with her covering her breasts, and tying her laces. She smacked the head of his cock. "Give over!"

The calling was growing nearer.

"Find me later," he said.

"Neither may, nor might," she said, and was gone, leaving him alone against the wall, with his breeches and hose around his ankles. He thought of his seed, dripping out of her, and groaned. His prick was primed to discharge, but aimed only at the cold moon.

He heard Walter Graham laughing.

"There you are. Master Burns asked me to look out for you, but it appears someone's beat me to it."

"She's left me all alone," MacLeod moaned.

"Like that? Oh, fair cruelty, let us not waste it," said Graham, taking him in hand, and relieving him so efficiently that he folded to his knees with his face in Graham's crotch.

"Sweet Kate, I thought you'd never ask," Graham said, taking his head with a practiced hand, and with the other freed his prick.

The sight and smell of a hard man wasn't unfamiliar to MacLeod and, by any road, fair was fair. Afterward, it was good to be clasped and kissed until the lost feeling had gone.

"Where were calling for me," MacLeod said. He was grateful for the help tying his points. Somehow, they kept getting crossed. "I saw you and Master Burns under the trees."

"Did you? Sean asked me to show you where your bed's to be. I think he's afeard he'll find you at the bottom of the pile when we carry out the dead in the morning."

"Dead!" exclaimed MacLeod. "What dead?"

"A joke! I joke. Go inside. I have an errand to finish. I'll find you later, and we'll talk," Graham said. "I'm beginning to think you have possibilities."

Without Graham's on his arse, the only thing to do was to go inside, have another drink, and to look out for Burns to thank him for his hospitality.

Unfortunately, all the benches in the taproom had been taken outside, where the fires were dying down, and it was standing room only at the counter-board. The only place to sit was beside Old Hundred, who was puffing on a long clay pipe in the inglenook. There, MacLeod took his drink. and sat. He regretted it immediately.

The old man smelled unwashed, and had a discomfiting habit of fingering a medallion hanging from a short chain around his neck. Whenever he let it go, it stuck to his grimy wattle and caught the firelight. The stamping was a rendering like wings surrounded by nail heads, and much polished by the old man's thumb.

"What's tha' medal?" MacLeod said, remembering the old man speaking of a battle. "You were a soldier once."

"Aye. A halberdier, as was my father with Sydney in Ulster; as was 'is father, 'im as fought at Branxton." The old man cackled, showing a mouthful of blackend stumps. "'im as took down the Scots king. Stabbed him in the back."

MacLeod decided he didn't care for the oldster, but he was full of food, and a lingering sense of fellow feeling.

The old man, however, removed the pipe from his mouth and used it to point to MacLeod's crotch, where the buttons of his waistcoat were undone showing the points of his breeches all tied in bows. "Who had you?"

MacLeod shrugged.

"Say!" Again, the old man jabbed his pipe stem to MacLeod's crotch. "You been done, or I don't know the signs."

"What if I have?" MacLeod said.

"That player fellow. He shoved it between your hams, din't he, and roger'd you good from the spots on your cheeks."

"Bess, if you must know, it was Bess, and she's a bonnie girl."

"I knew it!" The old man cackled and slapped his thighs. "I well know the smell of her cuny. She's a cross-grained wench that will give the pox to any bull, so long as she thinks she could get a babee off him. Did you tell her she can whistle at the moon, for the good your spunk will do her?"

MacLeod would have struck the man then and there, if he hadn't been so ancient, and if Bess hadn't come out of the kitchen.

"Time to get you home, old man," she said.

Old Hundred got up on his pins, still cackling and jibing, but Bess had become his new target.

"I know what you done, you leaky slut," he said.

MacLeod lurched to his feet. "Let her be!"

The old man wasn't to be stilled.

"I'll say what I like," he hissed into MacLeod's face, spraying spittle. "She's my wife, ain't she?"

"Your wife…?!" MacLeod said.

"Aye. I could beat her within an inch of her life for what she's done." Then he turned on Bess. "You're off the mark, again, if you think this one will give you a babee. It's a gelding."

Bess turned white and gave the old man a punch on the shoulder that rocked him on his pins. "Shut up, old fool, or I'll break you in half!" Then she turned to MacLeod. "Never mind you!" she said, and delivered such a slap to his face that he sat down, seeing stars.

There was silence in the room, as Bess hurried the old man out the door.

Despite that the incident would be food for gossip and, from the looks on the faces of the men at the counter-board, and their subdued conversation, already was, MacLeod stayed where he was.

His cheek stung. He turned his face against the wood of the settle to cool it and noticed for the first time that even though the walls of the inn were black with decades of accumulated soot, that they were painted. The firelight showed the figures. It wasn't one of the usual scenes; not Daniel in the lions' den, nor The Flood, although, there were animals. No, not animals. A man with curling horns was smiling sympathetically at him.

He thought of Bess's warm cuny, of Louise floating in the water, and then of Kristin and, to his shame, his prick throbbed.

With the old man gone, the other half of the settle wasn't empty long. It shook as Burns whumped down on it.

"You look raw."

"That…" MacLeod burped. "I am."

"Drink." Burns, handed him a full tankard. "You'll feel better."

MacLeod drank. It was some sort of fizzy white wine. It tasted wonderfully delicate and the bubbles went up his nose.

"What is't?"

"It's from Champagne."

"What's it called?"

"Champagne."

"It's good," MacLeod said. The bubbles tickled his nose. He hoped they would clear his head. "Is it dear?"

"It's very dear. I have an acquaintance who brings it to me by moonlight," Burns said. "Would you want to talk about it?"

MacLeod did not make the mistake of assuming Burns meant to talk about clandestine trading. He must have seen the stunning slap to his cheek that Bess had delivered, but MacLeod accepted he had deserved that. It was Kristin… If there was a man who might understand how another might spend a year in close perfumed rooms, making such love to a woman, that her very touch so imprinted his body that lust bubbled below the surface of his skin, and flamed anew whenever he thought of her, it might be Sean Burns.

But, just then, a line of men came jigging into the taproom. They had come out of one of the parlors, after dancing their way from the back of the house to the front. The man at the head of the line slipped in a puddle of spilt ale. Every man behind him began to collide with the man in front of him, one after the other, like counting beads.

"Whoopsy!" Burns shouted, as they all began to fall merrily about. "That needs sorting out." He stood up rolling his sleeves. "Wait here. I'll be back, once I've heaved the lot of them out."

MacLeod was sad that Burns was gone, and sorrier when Graham slid into his place.

"You know what this means, don't you?" said the player.

"That the playhouses will reopen."

"Exactly! I played Sebastian in the Queen's last command performance. Gloriana, herself! You remember?"

"No." said MacLeod, who had been eleven when Queen Elizabeth died.

"My 'Twelfth Night'. Did you never see it?"

"No."

"Ah, that's right, you said that you'd read it. My Hamlet?"

"No." MacLeod wished Graham would shut up, but on he went, chattering of the parts he'd played; of the actors he'd worked with, Kemp and Condell and Burbage; of the writers whose works he'd commissioned, Greene and Beaumont, Johnson and Kydd, Marlow and…

Names MacLeod had never heard.

 _He's happy. Everyone's happy; everyone except me._ He brooded, and sipped the Champagne. _I lost a year of my life servicing that bitch, and…and…I don't know who I am anymore._

"Which bitch?"

"What?"

"The one you spent a year of your life servicing?"

"Kristin." Having said her name out loud, MacLeod couldn't help saying it again. "Kristin."

"A beautiful name." Graham scooted closer. "Tell Uncle Wat all."

"She was beautiful. Not much meat on her bones, but hair like spun gold…never forget her…" It all came tumbling out. "I had to go…she would have killed me."

"In that case, you did," Graham said.

"I told her I was fond of her."

"And I'm certain you were. What happened?"

"Lou—" MacLeod hiccupped. "Louise."

"Louise?"

"Painted my picture. Drowned her a kitten."

"Louise drowned Kristin?"

"No. Kristin drowned Louise. She was mortal,"

"Kristin?"

"Louise."

"God's wounds!" Graham's mouth made an O. "Are you telling me this Kristin was immortal?"

"That's right. Kept me like a pet. What did you think I've been talking about?"

"I don't know, but I wasn't expecting that," Graham said. "What happened?"

"I confronted her, and I meant to kill her. I did! But…but, she was so beautiful, and…" MacLeod pictured Kristin in his mind, spread out on the bed, reaching toward him; him aching to reach back. "I know she was reaching for a knife…and I still couldn't take her head."

"You had her down, and you let her live!"

"Yes."

"Are you out of your—" Graham put his tankard down and patted the pockets of his waistcoat, until he found a small tablet and the stub of pencil. "You won't mind if I make a note."

"Why?" MacLeod said, suspiciously.

"Because we are the authors of our own destruction; if this doesn't make a great tragedy, it will make a grand comedy. I can't see a wedding at the end of it, quite yet, but… How did you meet her?"

"In the spring, in Normandy; she was in a traveling coach; there were highwaymen… I thought I was saving her life." MacLeod talked, looking on in utter fascination as Graham pricked down every word he said in short hand. "She took me to her chateau, and…"

"…kept you like a pet. That never happens to me," said Graham. "Why does that never happen to me?"

MacLeod would have said it was because he was a fortunate man, but Graham was engaged entirely in the writing.

"What happened next?"

"I told her I was a soldier, but she dressed me up like a poppet, made me bathe in a tub, and shit on a close stool. Said I had to learn courtly prancing, and gentlemanly manners, and to appreciate fine wines… Here—you—you're holding that all wrong. Here's how you do it." He fluttered his hands about, and took up Graham's drink from where he'd set it.

Then, holding each tankard between a thumb and a forefinger—with the other fingers delicately arched—he piped, "Darling—tell me—is this port, or is this claret?" He sipped from the edge of the left-hand tankard, and smacked his lips like a lady.

Graham observed his performance critically.

"Not bad, but real women don't speak in that fashion. There's a fine line between caricature and impersonation." He set his tablet down, and tapped the side of MacLeod's throat with the pencil stub. "Say it again, up here, but speak from back there; not from the nose, or for the chest. Lower in tone, and round out the vowels."

MacLeod couldn't stop himself.

"Is this port, or is this claret?" he trilled.

"Again." Graham took hold of MacLeod's nose, and squeezed his nostrils shut. "Lower."

"Is this port, or is this claret?" This time it came out in fluting tones, and Graham let go of his nose.

"Excellent! Seriously, consider becoming a player. You'll make a magnificent Kate."

"'S'blood, have you lost your mind? I'll do no such think!"

MacLeod took a drink, but, as it happened, from Graham's tankard which contained spirits. Only spirits.

He sputtered and coughed.

Graham roared, and took both tankards away from him.

"Come fair Kate," he said. "And place your head upon my shoulder.

MacLeod submitted to having his head drawn to Graham's shoulder, and to having his back rubbed. MacLeod sniffled. It felt good. It felt very good, and he did not see Graham looking up, as if at the ceiling of the Capella Magna. He did hear him say, as if the man had no doubt that he could see the future. "Sweet Kate, I'm going to make you a star!"

"You are…?" said MacLeod.

"I am. What say you to the prospect?

"I'm going to be sick," said MacLeod.

He was.

 __ _25 December 2017 (357 years, 8 months, 9 days, 1 hour and 50 minutes later)_

 __The film had reached its climax…

 _"Do it," Lady Carina cried. "Do it! I know you think I'm a monster."_

 _"You are a monster! You've killed Brother Robert!"_

 _Lord Jamie drew his arm back to deliver the killing stroke, but then he hesitated._

 _"You can't!" Lady Carina cried in triumph. "I knew it! You love me too much! Come, my love, and join me in eternity!"_

 _As she rose from the bed, her breasts, supported by the underwire of her blue nightgown, trembled like twin mounds of coconut blancmange on a plate. Her arms reached to enfold him. Her ruby lips parted to reveal the sharp points of her fangs._

 _And still Lord Jamie hesitated._

 _Then, from the floor where she had flung Brother Robert's body as if it were a rag doll, Brother Robert rose with his great two-handed broadsword in his hands, and cried, "For the love of heaven, you shall never have him!"_

 _There was a glimpse of the sword in mid-swing, accompanied by the swoosh of a razor slicing silk. Lady Carina's head flew across the room and bounced off the wall, as her headless body collapsed on the bed._

 _Lord Jamie, though, had eyes only for Brother Robert._

 _"Robert! You live!" he cried, releasing his sword, to clasping his dearest friend in the world in his arms._

 _With trembling fingers, he stroked the tender flesh of Brother Robert's throat where the vampire's vile mouth had polluted it, verifying by his touch that the flesh was as smooth as ever it had been. "Her death has freed you from the curse of the undead! I can't tell you how frightened I was. I was certain I had lost you forever."_

 _"Never, dearest Jamie," Brother Robert said, cupping Lord Jamie's face. "I wasn't to let that bitch have you, was I?"_

 _With that he sank his fangs in Lord Jamie's neck._

With the swelling of Mendelsohn's wedding march, the words The End appeared on the screen and the credits began to roll.

 _"There you have it, fright freaks,"_ said the late-night horror host. _"Lord Jamie and Brother Robert were planning a small church wedding, fiends only, but the Winchester brothers caught up with them in Topeka and brought an end to their evil reign of terror, or their terrible reign of evil, and I for one—"_

With a click, the screen went dead.

"I will fookin' kill him," said MacLeod.

"Pass the popcorn," Methos said.

The bowl was shoved in his direction and he stuffed the last handful of kernels into his mouth without bothering to pick up the few that fell. After a certain point, neither man had been able to look away from the screen, except when a commercial was on and the bed was littered with greasy husks, crumbs and un-popped kernels.

"That Lord Jamie doesn't look a thing like me," said MacLeod.

"Not a thing," agreed Methos.

MacLeod let out a lingering sigh. "At least he gave them a happy ending, but I will still fookin' kill him."

"No, you won't." Methos reached over and unclenched his fist. "Can we find out who Alan Smithee—the scriptwriter—is?"

"It's Walter. I guarantee he'd want plausible deniability for that turkey."

"But how did he know it was Brother Robert, not Lord Jamie, who killed Lady Carina?" Methos began winding a buttery finger around locks of MacLeod's hair, and making cork-screw curls. "It wasn't as if he was there."

"It's a mov…oh. I see what you mean. No, Walter thought it would make a better story. It's exactly what he would do. They're vampires after all. No need to be concerned."

Methos gave one of MacLeod's corkscrews a loving flick; bounced up and down.

 __ _30 April 1660_

MacLeod woke the next morning on a palette on the floor of a loft under the lattice of a roof that hung so low that he could have reached out and touched the thatch. There was a tiny window and, by the angle of the light coming in, it was still morning.

His head was pounding, and he had horse blanket over him. From the smell, the horse had been sick.

At times like this, he recalled his father telling him that it was fortunate that there were a limited number of ways for a man to make a fool of himself, and if he lived to be fifty he would have tried them all and could stop. His father had not been immortal, or ever seen a larger town than Plockton Town.

With a certain amount of apprehension, he checked under the blanket. He was naked, but not unpleasantly sticky. He looked around, discovered his personal effects, such as they were in a pile nearby, and the headache began to subside.

If any advantage had ever accrued from his friendship with Hugh Fitzcairn, it was a keen appreciation for times like this—when he woke anywhere that wasn't a chicken coop—and found his breeches, sometimes with his money in them.

And it was, he discovered, when he crawled out of bed. Someone had taken his doublet and shirt, but left breeches, boots, hose, and money pouch. Perhaps the same person who had thrown the horse blanket over him.

He dressed as well as he was able, climbed out of the loft and down a narrow winding stair that delivered him eventually to the taproom. There were two girls who were mopping the floor, who stopped what they were doing to ogle his naked chest.

MacLeod felt himself blushing, especially when Old Hundred, again installed in the inglenook, waved a tankard at him and cackled. "Yeah, there's a pretty sight, girls, but don't be wasting your time with him."

The girls giggled.

"Where can I find Master Burns?" MacLeod asked.

"I don't know, but that player fellow is a-lookin' for you. You see my woman first. Bess! He's alive!"

Bess came from the kitchen and told the girls to get back to work. "Come with me; Moll's washed your shirt; it'll be dry by now," she said to MacLeod, and he followed her into the kitchen, where she handed him his shirt and doublet, warm from the fire.

He tried to apologize to her.

"I didn't mean to cause you trouble last night."

"You're a man," she said. "You can't help it." Then, she relented a bit. "You caused me no trouble. I wanted you. I took you. It was pleasurable."

"He didn't hurt you?"

"He knows that if he comes at me with a stick, I'll take it away and beat him twice as hard."

MacLeod could well believe her.

Then, she said, "Is what he said true?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. I wish it wasn't." There was nothing else he could say. "I need to speak with Master Burns."

"Wash yourself first. You can use the rain barrel in the yard."

She pointed in the direction of the stable yard, and turned back to her work.

He found the rain barrel. He also found Graham pulling a crate of rolled canvases from the back of a painted wagon.

"Good morrow, Fair Kate." Graham grinned. "If we get a start today, we can depart without delay when the others arrive. I'm thinking a short tour of the north to shake the kinks out, and then to London…" One of the canvas rolls got away from him and as it hit the ground, the cord about it burst and it rolled out, exposing an entrance to Hell surrounded by toothy demons.

"Lend a hand." Graham began stuffing the other rolls in their crate.

MacLeod obliged him by stopping the unrolling canvas. As he began to reroll it, a stone canon ball fell off the back of the wagon.

"Thunder and lightning." Graham laughed. "You would think the props knew. Look alive there!"

MacLeod corralled the thunder ball with his foot, as he finished wrangling the canvas. Handing the roll back to Graham, he saw that there were two chickens nesting under the seat box of the wagon.

"Say hello to Agnes and Maud," said Graham. "You'll be minding them, too."

"Why? Are they props?"

"No, we need the eggs. You'll love Agnes. It's a grand life on the road, going by hard hoof from village to village, nothing to eat but hard cheese and buttermilk, and sometimes Agnes or Maud…"

MacLeod went over to the barrel and stuck his head and shoulders into the water as deeply as he could, and stayed submerged for as long he could hold his breath. When he came up for the air, Graham was still talking.

"…bootblack, rouge, and white lead, orange peels, and the smell of the crowd. You'll love Jeremy."

"Jeremy's the rooster?"

"Who told you? No, he plays all the leading women's roles. You'll understudy with him until you learn to use your voice—good breath control there—I saw—that's the way—and make up your visage properly. No one knows how to do a woman's visage like Jeremy…"

"Wait! What are you…?" MacLeod tried to interrupt and ask what Graham meant by 'understudy', but preparing to go out on the road again had lifted the man to heights from which he was not to be dislodged.

"I'll train you though in the correct affective gestures." Graham took MacLeod's and placed them in front of his face, as if to defend from a blow, then moved them wide.

"What are you…?" MacLeod said.

"These are the Five Positions of Feminine Subjugation. I want to see how…open your arms…now round them gracefully. Bring them down. Step, extend, let it flow… beautiful…"

The moves, slower though they were, weren't that different from the moves of fencing practice. MacLeod found himself naturally following Graham's directions, mirroring each gesture.

"…last, the Pose of Tragic Acceptance."

They reached out, their fingers almost touching, one hand with wrist bent at the forehead, and Graham was moved to declaim, " _'From fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty's rose might never die, but as the riper...'_ "

The rhythm of the words, intrigued MacLeod, and he would have willingly heard more, but the moment was spoiled by a deep base voice, saying, "What's this glass-gazing tailor's yard pretending at?"

In the gateway were six men of varying heights and ages. All of them were either smiling, or looking amused, except for a cheese-bellied man with long black hair and the spangled red complexion of an habitual drunkard.

"Christian! Ned!" cried Graham, both his smile and hands extending wide with exaggerated delight. "Jeremy! Come and meet Duncan."

In contrast to his companions who had been grinning at the scene, and now piled into the stable yard, surrounding Graham to welcome and be welcomed, and to clasp MacLeod's arm, Jeremy Benton merely looked at MacLeod's damp chest and kissed the air in his direction.

As a second wagon was driven into the stable yard, MacLeod flung his shirt over his head, shrugged his waistcoat and jacket over it, and went back to the kitchen.

Bess was there stirring a pot on a tripod at the fireplace.

"The players are here," he said.

As he made the announcement, she whipped around. "Is one of them a big man with black hair and a face like jack-o-lantern?"

"There is," he said. It was clear from the look on her face that Bess was no admirer of Jeremy Benton. That was not his concern however. "Is Master Burns about the house. I need to speak to him."

Bess pointed the far side of the kitchens' great fireplace, and then ran from the kitchen calling, "Jess, you run up and tell Moll to come down."

MacLeod went where she had pointed, and found in the shadows an open trap in the floor. Looking into it, he was reminded of the painted pit of hell on the canvas, although the air arising was cool. As he climbed down it took a moment to master a brief fear the trap would close above him.

His boots touched gravel and as he looked around, and his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw stacks of barrels and kegs, and discovered the cellars of the Green Man extended into the native rock, and were far larger than any country inn would have required.

There was a faint glimmer in the distance.

"Master Burns?" he called.

"Here," came the echoing reply. "Take care; the floor is sloping."

With a hand for the rows of standing barrels, he made his way toward the glimmer and eventually discovered Burns work place, a natural cave enhanced by ancient hands. By the lanthorn's light, MacLeod could see the floor underfoot had a pattern of grapes and sheaths of wheat.

Half of the chamber was taken up with racks of green glass bottles with their stoppers down, pointing to the floor. The other half had been set up for work with two low trestle boards. One of them supported distilling equipment. The other, at which Burns was working, bore a clutter of basins, boxes, measures and beakers.

"Look out for the well." Burns nodded at the floor between the trestles, and MacLeod say a two-foot curb that encircled an opening into the earth from which a draft of colder, wetter air rose. A man unaware could have tripped and fallen in. "Put the cover on, if you like. I can't stop what I'm doing, but I'll be finished shortly."

A wooden cover, like a barrel head, was leaning against the wall. MacLeod fitted it over the opening, smacking it with the palm of his hand to seat it tight, and then pulled a three-legged stool to the side the trestle where Burns was working.

"How old is this place?" he said, in wonderment.

"There's no way of knowing. There's been an ale house since the Conquest, and it's said Saint Cuthbert built a church, although, there must have been a Roman temple, once." Burns indicated the floor. "Before that…" He shrugged and made a circling motion with his hand. "Holy ground, time out of mind. Hush, now, letting down is fiddly business. Be careful of the rack behind you."

Silently, MacLeod watched him dip a measure into the bucket and slowly dribble water into the basin of pure spirits, repeating the action three times before five glass balls rose to the surface.

"That's finished," said Burns. He set down the measure and fished the balls out. "Shall we give it a try?"

MacLeod pushed two of the beakers closer to the basin, and Burns ladled a tot of whiskey into each one.

" _Sláinte agad-sa_!" said Burns. "The Excise Men. May they see as well at noon as they do at midnight!"

"The blind bastards!"said MacLeod. " _Slàinte gu soírraidh!_ "

They drank, and Burns said, "What think you?"

MacLeod took another sip and let the whiskey roll over his tongue, savoring the peaty flavor of it before swallowing.

"It has a marvelous fire," he said.

"Another?"

"I need to find breakfast." MacLeod declined. "I should go, and see your man about my horse

"Stay. Let the poor thing rest. You didn't come down here to find me out for the whiskey." Burns lifted four small kegs up from the floor to the board. "I need to fill these, so you may as well stay, and talk. I'm sorry we didn't get the chance last night."

MacLeod sat. Last night, drunk, he had felt that he could tell Burns anything; last night, he had spewed the story of Kristin to Walter Graham, who would make a play of it. This morning, sober, he cringed at the thought Burns might mock him, too, but this morning, he had another issue. He pulled his stool closer to the board.

"Master Graham is preparing his wagon, and his company have arrived. He's asked me to accompany them when they leave. He means to make a player of me."

"He said you had agreed, being in need employment, and anything that gets Walter on the road a day sooner…"

"I'm a soldier," MacLeod crossed his arms firmly on this chest, "not a play-actor!"

Burns looked at him. "You could learn."

"I'm not saying I couldn't, but Master Graham says he'll put me to study under a catamite! That's disgusting!"

Burns brows went up. "Who would that be?"

"Benton. Jeremy Benton."

"Jeremy Benton," Burns said, after a curiously thoughtful pause, "is a blowhard and a rascal, but Saint Scholastica herself wouldn't be safe from his attentions. I assure you he's no catamite."

"Then how does he play the woman?" Arms still crossed, MacLeod shrugged his disbelief.

"I'm not saying Jeremy's is the best Juliette I've ever seen, but he speaks well, and…there was a time he was considered beautiful. Like any good player, he acts the part."

"I'll not understudy him."

"I don't think that word means what you think it means." Burns shook his head. "Also, if there was anyone Wat would think you could profit from understudying in that fashion, it would be him."

"I am no' a—"

"Soldier? I know. Apparently, it's the only role you know how to play."

"It's not playing. It's what I am!"

Burns looked amused.

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, if that's all you want to be, but it's a very limited part, and always has a short run." Burns set a pitcher and funnel on the board, and then he looked seriously at MacLeod. "When future is all you have, it's a deadly attitude. What else can you do?"

"I can read, and I can write. The monks at Saint Christopher taught me."

"You may have observed a recent shortage of monasteries in these parts and, thanks to Meister Guttenberg, scrivening no longer pays. What else?

"I kept my father's kine."

"That's what I thought. You're still young and there are some who won't think it sporting to hunt you, but not many and not much longer. You have nothing but time before you; to survive the game we play, the best skill you can develop, other than a strong sword arm—and to switch that up—is to how not to fight."

"By learning to dissemble?"

"Yes." Burns tapped his nose. "'One man in his time plays many parts' and there's no better man to teach you than Walter Graham."

"If I played Caesar, perhaps, but he wants me to play women. I don't think so!"

"Why not?"

"What do women know?"

Burns looked at him, as if he'd sprouted a second head.

"I don't have a woman's charms."

"What, pray tell, are those?"

MacLeod touched a fingertip to his lips, stroked his cheek with the back of his hand, and spread the fingers of both hands on his chest, and looked coquettishly at Burns. "Like that."

"You have more than you think," Burns assured him. "And I'm certain Walter can teach you to make up any deficiencies."

"I can't contrive as a woman does. I can't go all soft and sweet, and _Ooh, don't hurt me!_ "

"Is that what women do? Again, I think you underestimate yourself."

"Much as it distresses me to say, you sound as if you're afraid."

"That's no' bloody likely! I don't understand women! What do they want, anyway!"

"I reck," said Burns, " _'Some_ _saiden wommen loven best richesse; some saide honour, some saide jolinesse; some riche array, some saidnen lust abedde, and ofte time to be widwe and wedde...'_ "

"Speak English! I don't know what that means."

"Are you beef-witted? Learn. They're not a mystery."

"Are they not?"

"I've never found it to be the case." Burns measured the depth of the liquid in the basin. "I haven't yet met one woman who wanted all things, or twenty who all wanted the same thing. As with men, each one is different."

"I can name one thing they all want," MacLeod said.

Burns rolled his eyes.

"I'm certain yours is outstanding, but not even that; don't flatter yourself. Women are exactly like men in their needs. But, unlike men, they've to put up with us telling them what they want, and what they're to be allowed from the day they're born. No one puts up with that, unless they're compelled to."

"But that's the way of things; women are smaller, and their minds are—"

"I pray you, do not quote Aristotle at me! Unless it's what he says of immortals. Are we 'in the way of things?' We're here. But, not like mortals, though, are we?"

"No, but…" MacLeod wanted to protest that he'd never read Aristotle, but Burns wasn't having it.

"But me no buts. Do you think immortal women don't want to live as much as we do?"

"I suppose they must, but they're weaker…"

"Many. Not all! But when they are weaker, how do you think they survive?"

"I don't know!"

"Exactly! Go with Walter, and learn. Maybe you'll learn to recognize danger the next time it's by."

MacLeod thought of Rebecca, and of Amanda. It had never crossed his mind that either might mean him harm. "Yes, but—!"

He opened his mouth to protest that women did not play fair, they had a different set of weapons than men, and had a sudden impression of Kristin screaming _Do it!_ And him, unable to 'do it.' It was visceral, like a body blow.

"What's really going on here?" said Burns. "If you think quoting Aristotle will save your head, I'll wager it's a woman that takes your head."

MacLeod could feel his blood turning cold; it must have shown in his face.

"Good," Burns said, sympathetically. "Be afraid. Go with Walter, and learn to be a woman; the next time one comes for you, you'll have a fighting chance to survive."

"Never!" MacLeod jumped up.

"Sit down!" Burns cried, and then looked with horror at something behind MacLeod

"What is't?" MacLeod said, and turned just as the stool which he'd been sitting on hit the rack behind it.

The rack shook, and the bottles in it trembled.

"Get down," Burns said, urgently. "Don't move!"

As MacLeod crouched, Burns spread out his hands, and patted the air, as if that would calm the shivering bottles. After a few minutes of tense silence, it seemed as if it had.

"I told you to be careful. That was close," Burns said, and relaxed with a sigh.

MacLeod began to uncoil. "What wast…?"

As he began to speak, there was a sound like a wet squib exploding, as a bottle at the top of the rack burst and fired shards of green glass at the bottles around it. Four of those exploded, and another discharged its wooden stopper with such force that it flew like a bullet and struck MacLeod in the head.

He fell to his knees with his hand over his eye, as the explosions continued. Each volley was louder than the one before. Each rank showered the one below it with greater amounts of glass and torrents of wine.

Then the cannonade ended.

All was silent, except for the drip-drip dripping of the wine, and Burns cursing softly in Irish.

MacLeod peeked between his fingers. Burns clutching the back of his head, holding himself in check as he stared in amaze at the serried rows of broken bottles and the floor awash.

"Was't the Champagne?" MacLeod said.

"Can you doubt it?"

"You said it was very dear. How much did it cost?"

"Fifty guineas the load."

"Fifty!" MacLeod ejaculated, appalled at such an extravagant outlay of money. "For a few paltry bottles of _wine_?"

"You're fortunate this is holy ground." Burns' rage fell like an axe. "You make it very hard not to want your head off!"

"The bottles—they must have been at fault. Wine doesn't explode like that."

"The only thing at fault here is the mewling frothy-arsed giglet I see in front of me. How are you going to pay for this?"

MacLeod considered that it would be wiser not to mention the six shillings that were all he had to his name in ready money. He placed his hands in front of his face in a gesture of warding. Then he let them fall open gracefully to express the abject acceptance of guilt, then held them cupped, as if they were the hands of a beggar, at which point he forgot what came next, and let them fall in utter contrition.

"What is that supposed to be?" said Burns.

"The Five Positions of Feminine Subjugation as interpreted by Duncan MacLeod. Do you think Master Wat would give me an advance on salary?"

"If that's the best you can do, your salary will two hot meals and a flea ridden cot and you should thank him. Go with him. Learn to be a player, and we'll say no more about it. It's worth it to me, if I see the last of you both for a decade, or two."

MacLeod reached a hand out to Burns, and raised the other to his forehead, with the wrist bent.

"And what's that…?"

"The Pose of Tragic Acceptance."

 _25 December 2017 (357 years, 8 months, 9 days, and 4 hours later)_

The bed had been brushed off, food had been delivered and, most important, beer was at hand.

MacLeod was contemplating the last slice of what had been, in keeping with the spirit of the film, an extra-large stuffed crust with extra cheese and extra sausage.

"Are you going to eat that, or not?" said Methos.

" _That cardboard wedge whose perfume and congealed cheese were once so fragrant as would a priest tempt his vow to break…?_ ""

"Just say yes or no," said Methos, reaching.

He didn't really want the slice, but he thought it looked lonely, and would have eaten it except that MacLeod got there first. He snatched it up, and consumed it in three huge bites, finishing the performance by noisily sucking each finger clean.

"You are officially disgusting," Methos said. "Do you recall what fifty guineas was worth? I'm pretty sure it would have taken a lifetime for a common soldier to come by that kind of money. Let's see, a guinea was twenty shillings, or thirty… " He began punching the buttons of an imaginary calculator. "What year was it again?"

MacLeod captured his hand and secured it to his chest.

"He let me off easily, although he called me a hell-born babe, along with a number of other things, for years. After they perfected bottles that didn't explode from a hard look I had one of the biblically proportioned ones delivered to him the year Ireland became independent."

"A Jeroboam?"

"A Melchizedek. So I made it up to him. Eventually. In kind..."

"And you became an actor," said Methos.

"I became an actor." MacLeod kissed the hand he'd thieved. " _'There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we will'_."

 _ **A**_ _ll the world's a_ _f_ _tage,  
And all the men and women, merely __**P**_ _layers;  
They haue their __**E**_ _xits and_ _ **E**_ _ntrances,  
And one man in his time playes many parts,  
His __**A**_ _cts being_ _f_ _euen ages..._


End file.
